Nassir Amit
Nassir Amit leading his Flesh Tearers in battle.]] Nassir Amit was the Captain of the Blood Angels Legion's 5th Company during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras of the 30th and 31st Millennia. He was a line commander, who was notorious for proudly displaying his Artificer-wrought battleplate's impact marks, blade scratches and other signifiers of battle-wear, even on formal occasions when protocol called for it to be in good order and dressed in a manner befitting such an important function. The armour mirrored the martial bluntness of the warrior who wore it. Of all the IXth Legion's captains, Amit's reputation -- and that of his company -- was the most bloodthirsty. More than once, the 5th Company had been called to censure by Sanguinius for their zeal in pursuing enemy forces. It was not for nothing that the outspoken officer had earned the nickname the "Flesh Tearer," and rather than deny the epithet, he had made it his own. During the Second Founding when the Blood Angels Legion was dissolved into a number of Successor Chapters, Amit was chosen to become the first Chapter Master of the newly formed Flesh Tearers Chapter. History Great Crusade ]] Nassir Amit was the ferocious Captain of the Blood Angels Legion's 5th Company during the Great Crusade. Of all the IXth Legion's Captains, Amit's reputation -- and that of his company -- was the most bloodthirsty. Their zealotry in battle had earned them a dubious reputation amongst their Battle-Brothers, for they had been censured more than once for their pursuit of enemy forces. The bloodthirsty Astartes officer had a predatory way about him, a sense of aggression barely held in check that many of his fellow captains had seen unleashed in full many times on the field of battle. Like their commander, the Battle-Brothers of the 5th Company were known to bear Bolters and flaying knives in battle. Despite his often unsavoury reputation, Amit was a formidable warrior and commander, and he and his company had taken part in many notable campaigns throughout the Great Crusade. Amit was noted for leading his company in the Imperial Compliance of Melchior, a joint campaign that was carried out by both the vaunted Luna Wolves of Primarch Horus, and the Blood Angels Legion. The world was the last bastion of the xenos known as the Nephilim. He was also present during the Council of Nikaea, a great Imperial conclave called by the Emperor of Mankind on the world of Nikaea, that was intended to determine whether or not the use of psychic abilities represented a boon or a grave danger to Mankind and the newborn Imperium of Man. Though he was present throughout most of the proceedings, Sanguinius had ordered Amit to stand sentinel in the Great Angel's personal quarters when the Emperor finally pronounced His Decree Absolute banning the use of psychic powers in the Space Marine Legions. Amit, like his Primarch, was staunchly pro-Librarian, and he suspected that his Primarch had relegated such a mundane duty to him so that he would not try to argue with the Emperor's decision. When the Blood Angels' First Captain Raldoron returned to the Primarch's quarters, Amit argued with him instead, and proceeded to go on a tirade about why the Emperor's decision was wrong and that forbidding the Space Marine Legions' Librarians from using their innate abilities was a mistake. He also expressed his concern as to how they were to integrate their psychic brethren back into the rank-and-file. When Sanguinius entered the chamber, he assured Captain Amit that the Librarians would be welcomed within the ranks of the IXth Legion, but warned him that his father's words were law, and by that authority alone, the Edicts of Nikaea were beyond contestation. Later, Amit and his 5th Company took part in a joint campaign between the Blood Angels Legion and the Alpha Legion in the Kayvas Belt fighting against the Greenskins. Many tribes of Orks, scattered and leaderless after the hammerblow they had suffered at Ullanor during the Ullanor Crusade, had fled to the points of the etheric compass -- and many had come to rest in the Kayvas Belt, where they carved new outposts out of the drifting, mineral-rich rocks, and licked their wounds while they re-armed. The Alpha Legion had tracked the Orks to their lair and petitioned the Warmaster Horus for the reinforcements required to prosecute their plan of annihilation. The Blood Angels agreed to assist their cousins in the XXth Legion, with Sanguinius himself marshalling a sizable intervention to support the efforts of the 88th Expeditionary Fleet. The mission, Alpharius said, would be five standard years in execution. The Angel rejected that premise and promised it would be over in one, and he committed vessels from every active Blood Angels expeditionary fleet to the cause. Sanguinius was proved right -- more or less. Just over thirteen solar months after the commencement of the Kayvas initiative, the Orks were almost totally annihilated. The Horus Heresy Just as it seemed that the Emperor's dream could be fulfilled, the Great Crusade ended in the most terrible and unimaginable way. It came to pass that the Imperial Warmaster Horus, the greatest of the Emperor's genetic sons, fell to the temptations of the Chaos Gods and became swayed by their promises of power. He then sought to sway his brother Primarchs to his cause. Horus and Sanguinius had fought many campaigns by each other's side. Their relationship was so close it had even incited jealousy amongst their brother Primarchs on occasion. But in his black heart Horus knew that Sanguinius would never willingly betray their father, and so he had formulated an audacious plan to either convert the Blood Angels Legion to his cause or utterly destroy them. Horus had discovered solar decades earlier a carefully-guarded secret of the Blood Angels during their joint campaign on Melchior. Horus had witnessed Sanguinius killing one of his own Astartes. The Great Angel explained to his shocked brother that he had discovered that within his own genome there was a terrible, mutant trait that lay buried and waiting to be awakened. This genetic flaw would later be known as the Red Thirst. Decades later, Horus would exploit this knowledge of the Blood Angels' Flaw. The Warmaster had found a way to sway his "beloved" brother's Legion to his cause and the service of the Chaos Gods. In his capacity as Imperial Warmaster, Horus ordered Sanguinus to gather his entire Legion and make for the Signus Cluster, a trinary star system located in the Ultima Segmentum near the Eastern Fringe. His IXth Legion was to cleanse the 7 worlds and 15 moons that comprised the Signus Cluster of xenos invaders and release the humans settled there from their xenos-overlords in what would later be known to history as the Signus Campaign. Unaware of the Warmaster's perfidy, Sanguinius willingly obeyed his brother Primarch and immediately set out for this volatile region of space. Unbeknownst to the Blood Angels, they were blindly walking into a deadly trap, for the Signus Cluster had fallen prey to agents of the Ruinous Powers and become a veritable Realm of Chaos -- a system of hellish Daemon Worlds under the rule of a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh known as Kyriss the Perverse. When the Blood Angels arrived in-system, their fleet was ambushed by the malevolent forces of the Warp, crippling or killing many of their Navigators and Astropaths in the initial onslaught. The Blood Angels now faced the fury of Chaos for the first time. Amit began to suspect that his Legion had been led into a cunning trap, following the events that occurred upon the world of Horst, after Squad Cassiel had been rescued by the timely arrival of Amit and his 5th Company from strange hostiles. During this time, Amit had also discovered that Raldoron's adjutant, Mkani Kano, a former Librarian, had been secretly seeking out his former brothers of the Librarius to restore their fellowship and maintain their psychic abilities in violation of the Edicts of Nikaea. Amit approached Kano and offered to assist him in his hidden endeavours. When the Blood Angels moved upon the Signus Cluster's capital world of Signus III, known as Signus Prime, they were assailed by malevolent energies which surged across the void, attacking the minds of the psychically sensitive mortal crewmen of the Blood Angels' Expeditionary Fleet. In the second wave of attack, the Blood Angels were set upon by monstrous hell-ships -- deformed mutant vessels afflicted by the warping powers of Chaos -- which broke free of the planet's gravity and surged forwards to assault the Blood Angels fleet. One of the hell-ships collided with the Blood Angels' flagship, the Red Tear, and disgorged hundreds of Warp-spawned creatures and Chaos-corrupted Signusi crewmen. Meanwhile, on the command deck of the Red Tear, the ship's commanding officer, Admiral DuCade and her entire bridge crew had become infected with madness from the psychic cacophony. After killing her entire bridge crew, the mad Admiral set a new course for the massive flagship towards the surface of Signus Prime. She destroyed the bridge's command console with her personal sidearms so that her deed could not be undone. After the Red Tear crashed upon the planet's surface and the accompanying Word Bearers' vessel, the Dark Page, under Chaplain Tanus Kreed fled, Sanguinius called for a Council of Angels, a gathering of all the Legion's senior captains, to decide their next course of action. It was here that Amit spoke bluntly of what had come to pass, voicing both his fears, and that which no one wanted to admit -- they faced neither xenos nor any foe that had been spawned from the material realm -- for these enemies were literal daemons. When Sanguinius tried to tell Amit that he had made his point, the "Flesh Tearer" continued to speak, though many would not wish to hear it. Amit declared that his fears about Signus Prime had been proven right, and the world was nothing more than a trap, plain and simple. Amit went on to state that the Blood Angels had been assailed with lies and treachery since they had first first set sail through the void for the Signus Cluster. And the Word Bearers' Chaplain's duplicity in leading them there could mean only one thing. They had been betrayed by their brethren Astartes. Kreed was not the architect of this betrayal, for he was only a follower, not the leader. Amit dared voice the opinion that it was the Warmaster who had sent them here with a lie on his lips. That he had possessed full knowledge of what they faced all along, and sent them anyway. Amit's words had barely left his lips when Sanguinius swept forth and knocked Amit down with the pommel of his great sword. His red blade then came about and its tip was placed upon the captain's bared throat. The Primarch would not abide such aspersions being cast upon his brother Horus. He ordered Amit to recant, for he would cut his armour from him and mark him for punishment. The willful captain refused, for in his hearts he knew that he spoke the truth. Amit's fears were confirmed by Helik Redknife, who led a small cadre of Space Wolves that were also present at the proceedings and had accompanied the Blood Angels to the Signus Cluster. Before the Blood Angels had set out for the Signus System, the small cadre had been sent by their Primarch Leman Russ, under orders from Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra, to watch over the Primarch Sanguinius, and if need be, to attempt to kill him if he showed any signs of disloyalty like that of his brother Magnus the Red. Redknife explained that such betrayals had already been committed, such as the act committed by the Thousand Sons' Primarch, who had broken the Emperor's Decree Absolute with his continued embrace of psychic sorcery on Prospero. With these new revelations, the Blood Angels resolved to face the threat on Signus Prime and emerge victorious, no matter the cost. During the subsequent Battle of Signus Prime, the ferocious Space Marines confronted the vast, nightmarish horde of Chaos Cultists and packs of monstrous daemons. Sanguinius faced a new threat, in the form of a Greater Daemon of Khorne, a Bloodthirster of the Blood God named Ka'bandha. The Angel and the daemon fought a titanic battle amidst the blood and carnage all around them. At the height of this confrontation, as the Primarch prepared to strike a killing blow against the fallen Bloodthirster, Ka'bandha struck a dishonourable blow with its massive barbed whip around the Primarch's legs, smashing the Angel to the ground. The Greater Daemon then summoned forth the malefic powers known as the Ragefire, and cut a huge swathe through the ranks of the Sons of Baal with his great axe, killing 500 Blood Angels in an instant. The psychic backlash of so many of his sons dying so suddenly knocked Sanguinius into unconsciousness. Leaderless, the Blood Angels' fury was unfettered. The brutal violence of the Bloodthirster Ka'bandha unleashed something dark within the psyche of the Blood Angels, a thirst for blood that would not be slaked until the taint of Chaos had been wiped away from the planet. The Sons of Sanguinius lost themselves in the riot of killing. When Amit and some of his warriors fell into the depths of the Red Thirst they set upon Helik Redknife and his Space Wolves, slaughtering all of them. Following the battle, Amit submitted himself to First Captain Raldoron for punishment. He revealed what had occurred to the Space Wolves, but Azkaellon, the Commander of the Sanguinary Guard, revealed to Amit that he had already lied to their Primarch about how the Space Wolves had died. Enraged, Amit nearly came to blows with the Sanguinary Guard Commander, but Azkaellon explained that if their lord knew the truth, he would blame himself for what had happened. He would then tell his brother, the Wolf King, the truth. This would risk the bonds between their two Legions, a bond at a time when unity was sorely needed. Amit asked Azkaellon how he was supposed to ease the pain in his heart with what he had done? Azkaellon informed him that it was a burden that he must ultimately learn to bear. Age of Darkness If the Great Crusade was Mankind's finest hour, then the Horus Heresy was surely its blackest. Brother fought brother, with quarter neither offered nor given. Heroes were slain, worlds burned and the Emperor's dreams of peace were shattered forever. In the midst of this darkness, the Blood Angels never wavered, but held true at the Emperor's side. Sanguinius now stepped into the void left by Horus' desertion, assuming command of the Emperor's loyal forces. In doing so, he thrust the Blood Angels into the brutal forefront of the fighting. The rivalry of the Blood Angels with the World Eaters now escalated into bitter enmity as the two Legions found themselves serving different masters, and their confrontations were to be amongst the bloodiest and hardest fought of that bloodiest of wars. It is said that Horus hated and feared Sanguinius more than any of his brothers and wove many strategies to ensnare or slay him, though all failed. For all the might of the Emperor, for every effort of Sanguinius and the remaining Loyalist Primarchs, the forces of Horus drove all before them. In too short a time, the Emperor of Mankind was assailed within His great Imperial Palace on Terra in 014.M31. When the imminent arrival of the Space Wolves, Dark Angels and Ultramarines Legions forced Horus to gamble on forcing a final battle with the Emperor by dropping the Void Shields protecting his Battle Barge, the Vengeful Spirit, Primarchs Sanguinius, Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists, and the Legio Custodes joined the Emperor in a daring teleport assault upon the vessel. As Sanguinius possessed the psychic ability of foresight, it seems almost certain that he knew he was going to his own death. It remains unknown whether fatalism or simple loyalty to his father brought Sanguinius aboard. The Blood Angels themselves have no doubt on the matter. The two Primarchs and former brothers finally met on the command deck. In evil cunning, Horus offered Sanguinius a position of power if he would renounce his loyalty to the Emperor, and Sanguinius refused. Thus rejected, Horus flew into a rage and attacked. Even at the peak of his powers, Sanguinius could not have hoped to prevail against the monster Horus had become, and the Primarch was weary and wounded from his travails on Terra. Despite his grievous wounds, Sanguinius managed to match Horus' martial prowess, even at the height of his daemonic power, and Horus was forced to deal with the Angel by psychic methods. In his limitless malice, Horus made sure that Sanguinius' death was the most painful and foul that the boundless evils in his service could administer. The Warmaster's psychic assault was so powerful, it echoed down through the generations of Sanguinius' sons who are haunted by its echo within their souls to this day, as the Blood Angels were forced to draw new genetic samples from their Primarch's corpse after his death because of the loss of gene-seed stocks they had incurred during the Heresy. The result was the imposition of a new curse upon later generations of Blood Angels -- the Black Rage. When the Emperor at last entered Horus' sanctum, He found His rebellious Warmaster standing above Sanguinius' broken, bleeding corpse. In the battle that followed, Horus was finally vanquished, though the Emperor too was cast down near to death. There are many tales told of this final battle and, though the exact facts are long lost, one detail holds through all the recitations through all the millennia since. Despite the Emperor's great power, he could never have bested Horus had not the blade of Sanguinius wrought a chink in the Warmaster's armour, and because of this, the Blood Angels claim him to be the greatest of the Primarchs. Second Founding The Imperium was forever changed in the wake of Horus' defeat. No longer would the beneficent Emperor take a martial role in Mankind's defence, for His shattered body was now sustained only by the life-giving machineries of the Golden Throne. The reconstruction of His empire and the final rout of the Traitor forces would now fall to the surviving Primarchs, men such as Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists and Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines. Indeed, it was Guilliman who would have the greatest lasting effect upon the now-leaderless Blood Angels. Through the Codex Astartes -- that great treatise on the restructuring and ordering of the Space Marines -- Guilliman's legacy would reshape the Blood Angels Legion into the Chapters that defend the Imperium to this day. Guilliman sought to ensure no one man could ever again command the destructive power of an entire Space Marine Legion. To do this, he insisted that the Legiones Astartes be divided into smaller 1,000-man autonomous units. Some of his surviving brothers railed against this dissolution as a perceived injustice and a sleight against the integrity of their Legions. At a time when emotions were running high and weary souls saw treachery and judgement in every remark, this edict threatened to cause a new Imperial civil war. In the end, though, Guilliman could not be denied, and one by one his surviving brothers and the leaderless Legions relented. The Legiones Astartes were no more: the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes were born in their place. For the Blood Angels, this division was a cruel double blow. Their Primarch, Sanguinius, was dead, slain at Horus' own hands in the final moments of the Heresy and now, without time to grieve their father nor recoup the terrible casualties suffered in the Battle of Terra, this close-knit fraternity was to be sundered. The survivors lacked an obvious leader and, worse still, the first signs of the Flaw were beginning to manifest within the ranks of the Legion. It is fair to say that the Blood Angels' encounters with the scions of Chaos had left the Legionaries scarred and the horror of their master's death was a visceral wound upon their souls. Since fighting against the daemons of Khorne and Slaanesh at Signus Prime, a nascent thirst had awoken within the Legion, and the aftershock of Sanguinius' death at the hands of the Warmaster had cursed their souls with what would come to be known as the Black Rage. Though the Heresy was over, for the Blood Angels, their greatest trial was just beginning. From the midst of this sorrow and tragedy arose the Chapters of this new birth, referred to as the Second Founding. While each Legion worked out for itself how to divide (and some Legions experienced a more harrowing road than even the Blood Angels), the Sons of Sanguinius were at last united by the sole survivor of the Sanguinary Guard, Azkaellon. Accounts from this time differ greatly, but all concur that at Azkaellon's counsel the survivors of the IXth Legion formed a small number of Chapters, commanded by the champions of the Blood Angels. Each took on the traditions and rites of their Legion as the basis for their new brotherhood and adopted a fitting name. Thus began a time of rebuilding for the Sons of Sanguinius, who separated to establish themselves as autonomous organisations. Though Azkaellon had been first among equals, he had been too shaken by Sanguinius' death, too weak to stand his ground and fight for the Legion. The rest of Amit's brothers had shown little more conviction. He and he alone had voiced his discontent with the division of the Legion, and it had gone unheard, dismissed as the angry words of a grieving son, the rantings of a mad butcher. Notably, even in this time of disarray, the newly-promoted and vengeful Chapter Master Nassir Amit, led his eponymous new Successor Chapter on a blood-soaked crusade to seek out and annihilate any vestige of the Traitor Legions. Their actions, even in the early years of the Flesh Tearers Chapter's existence, laid the foundations upon which they would be known, and judged, ever after. Bloody Legacy After their official formation, the Flesh Tearers immediately left Terra to embark upon a new Imperial Crusade to eliminate Traitor forces still loyal to Horus as well as continuing to purge Chaos infestations from Imperial worlds during the period known as the Great Scouring. The Flesh Tearers were assigned the Battle-Barge Victus from their former Legion, which served as their mobile fortress-monastery for the next three thousand Terran years. The Flesh Tearers' reputation for savagery in battle was soon well-known, and so the terrible Flaws of the IXth Legion's genetic legacy must have asserted themselves very soon after the death of the Blood Angels' Primarch. During this time, these Space Marines remained constantly on Crusade, destroying any Heretics whose path they crossed. Those they encountered, they defeated. Those they defeated, they utterly annihilated, leaving no stone left unturned and no living beings left to continue any heresy. Some rumours circulated of their brutality, even going so far as to reach the High Lords of Terra. However, their degree of success in achieving compliancy was nearly unparalleled. During this period of strife, as the Imperium recovered from Horus' treachery, results were valued far more than technique. As such, there were no investigations into the savage rumours that accompanied the Flesh Tearer's implacable advance. For thousands of Terran years after their founding, the Flesh Tearers were a mobile, crusading Chapter. Eventually, however, in the 34th Millennium, the Chapter chose to establish a permanent fortress-monastery upon the Death World of Cretacia, deep in the galactic west. Cretacia was home to a small population of feral humans whose genes were pure and who had developed a remarkable Neolithic warrior culture that produced strong and able Flesh Tearers recruits. The Chapter had great need of this easy supply of recruits, for as the centuries passed the Flaw in the Flesh Tearers' gene-seed gradually worsened and few Flesh Tearer Space Marines were able to avoid succumbing to the Black Rage after more than 200 standard years. The combination of an environment that suited the Chapter's martial philosophy with a readily available supply of potential candidates made Cretacia an ideal world for the Flesh Tearers to make their home. With this realisation, the Chapter ceased its endless Crusade and established their fortress-monastery. Death In the end, anger and despair saw the end of Nassir Amit. He had been the first of the Flesh Tearers Chapter Masters. A brutal, vicious warrior, his deeds were great and many. He had fought in the IXth Legion's greatest battles and conquered Cretacia to serve as his Chapter's new homeworld. The Chapter records of the present day do not indicate how Nassir Amit died or who had ultimately bested him. Only the remains of his suit of Tactical Dreadnought Armour were found aboard one of the Chapter's ships after battle. Most of the data in the Cogitators and memory banks of the vessel had been corrupted, and the events that led to his death are a secret unto this day. Personality Nassir Amit was notorious amongst his Blood Angels brethren for his savage and brutally honest nature, a trait which Primarch Sanguinius highly valued, as Amit was unafraid to speak the truth bluntly and unabashed, even when others would stop when decorum demanded it. In battle, Amit possessed a savage aspect, utilising his iconic serrated flaying blade which earned him his epithet. His savagery in battle had even earned him the respect of the murderous warriors of the XIIth Legion, the World Eaters, within the fighting pits of their flagship Conqueror before the start of the Heresy, for his ability to fight past first blood, third blood and into sanguis extremis (a fight to the death). Amit wasn't afraid to do what he thought was right, even if it meant going against Legion law, for he possessed little fear of his Legion's Wardens. Wargear *'Artificer Armour' - Amit wore a mighty suit of Indomitus Pattern Terminator Armour, which prominently featured the striking serrated iconography of the Flesh Tearers Chapter on the right shoulder guard and the Crux Terminatus on the left one. This suit of Terminator plate was a heavily bastardised suit of war-plate. Re-forged at Roboute Guilliman's request, it had once belonged to Brother Bial of the Blood Angels' 1st Company, but like the others whose battleplate the Terminator Armour had subsumed, he was long dead. Though this newly forged armour was meant to honour the Reformation of the Imperium and the birth of the new Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, to announce that the Imperium was unbroken and that its will was as strong as ever, it only reminded Amit of all that they had lost to the darkness of the Heresy. *'Iron Halo' - The Iron Halo emits a very strong gravitic Conversion Field around its wearer, which makes his armour even harder to pierce with enemy weapons. In addition it also provides its wearer with immense resilience to even the most potent weapons on the battlefield such as Lascannons and missiles of all varieties. The shield stands a good chance of deflecting many deadly projectiles with ease. *'Pair of Chainfists' - Amit wore a pair of Chainfists with integrated Storm Bolters worked into the gauntlets which had been taken from Brothers Aquinus and Furiel, Veteran Blood Angels warriors who had died by Sanguinius' side. *'Flaying Knife' - This iconic close combat weapon took the form of a large Astartes Combat Knife that possessed barbed edges, the source of his epithet. *'Frag Grenades' *'Krak Grenades' Sources *''Fear to Tread'' (Novel) by James Swallow *''Flesh of Cretacia'' (Novel) by Andy Smillie *''Betrayer'' (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden *''Death and Defiance'' (Anthology) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Guy Haley, Nick Kyme, Andy Smillie, and James Swallow, "Virtue of the Sons," by Andy Smillie *''Virtues of the Sons'' (Short Story) by Andy Smillie *''Sins of the Father'' (Short Story) by Andy Smillie *''Red Fury'' (Novel) by James Swallow *''Sons of Wrath'' (Novel) by Andy Smillie *''Trial By Blood'' (Novel) by Andy Smillie *''At Slaughter's End'' (Audio) by Andy Smillie *''Hunger'' (Audio Book) by Andy Smillie Gallery Amit Azkaellon.jpg|Nassir Amit stands with his brother, Azkaellon, leader of the Sanguinary Guard, during the Horus Heresy. Amit's Termi Armour.jpg|Nassir Amit's Terminator Armour, re-forged at Guiliman's request. This armour was meant to honour the formation of the Second Founding Chapters of the newborn Adeptus Astartes following the Horus Heresy. Amit's Crux Terminatus.jpg|Amit's left shoulder guard, which displays the Crux Terminatus, said to contain a shard of the Emperor's own blessed armour worn during His final battle against Horus. Amit's Chain Glove.jpg|One of Nassir Amit's Chainfists with integrated Storm Bolter, taken from a fallen Blood Angels Veteran who died by Sanguinius' side. es:Nassir Amit Category:N Category:A Category:Blood Angels Category:Characters Category:History Category:Imperial Characters Category:Space Marines